Sunday, 3 February 2013

I took Duke to a poultry auction today but for must have got my dates
wrong so we decided to make to most of the journey and headed to a
near-by place of interest: The Cerne Abbas Giant

Dorset is famous for various images cut into the chalk on hillsides. Most of them are of animals, The Cerne Abbas Giant is the only one I am aware of that features a man with a huge erection.

I love this place, I think it have one of the shortest average visitor duration of almost anywhere. If you sit in the car park for a few minutes at almost anytime you will see the following. Cars pull in, stop for about 15 seconds to have a look and drive away. I think this is because you spot the giant from the road, feel like you should take a look but very quickly become aware that you are basically looking at a child's drawing of a man with a big willy - it usually only take a few embarrassing awkward seconds for everyone to realise they have seen enough.

A few brave souls do venture out of the car to look at the 'information' board. It says basically the following: We don't know who made the giant, why, how or when and we don't know who it is meant to be. In a beautifully gentle National Trust kind of way the board avoids all mention of the monstrous engorged member towering over the reader.

I took Duke for a hike to see if we could view the Giant from any other angles - The answer is no. The Giantis fenced off so the only place you can view it is the car park a few miles away

I noticed that there is a human sized hole in the protective fencing around the giant which indicates that perhaps some couples really do sneak through to have sex on the end of his end. Unfortunately we didn't see anyone doing that today.

There is a tiny dot right at the top of this picture that is my car in the car park. From up here I could just about hear the sniggers from a school minibus full of oily teenagers that had stopped for a look

Saturday, 2 February 2013

Duke had the most fun ever at the park yesterday. Whenever we see other dogs Duke always goes mad, pulling on his lead, barking, jumping.....he is pretty big and I have never been sure what his intentions are so until now I try to keep him away from other dogs. Yesterday though we were joined in the park by a bouncy playful barkless 7 month old Labrador called Lilly. I talk to Lilly's owners a bit and she is a bout the same size as Duke so I decided to see what would happen if I let him off the lead.

Well, he loved it, they had brilliant fun, running around, jumping, chasing each other a little bit of wrestling, no biting, barking or growling. I had worried that Duke might be aggressive but he is absolutely not, he just really wants to play. A couple of times Lilly had him pinned on the floor and once she nipped him and he yelped away but not a hint of any aggression from Duke. An older Labradoodle came to join in the fun and a couple of old Jack Russels - all of the dogs played brilliantly together. I was so proud of Duke and relieved that he appears to be so sociable and dog friendly.

I am going to be a lot more relaxed with him off lead now, even though his recall is still a bit hit and miss, knowing that he will not be aggressive with other dogs and he is great with strange people although he does occasionally jump up still.

As usual my mind wondered onto things other than blogging and I chased a few white rabbits...anyway. I'm back. Not much has changed apart from our family now contains a wonderful new member. A German Shepherd puppy called Duke. We got him at 8 weeks and have had all sorts of adventures, he is now nearly 5 months old. I'm just going to jump in and start posting as if you know all about him.

Duke, a few days after we brought him home weighing just 3.8kg at 8 weeks old